


Hold Fast to Dreams

by ToSerWithLove



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ADWD spoilers, An Obligatory Bath Scene, Bedsharing, F/M, Post - A Dance With Dragons, The Slowest of all Slow Burns, The Winds of Winter spoilers (released chapters)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2020-04-07 08:03:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19080865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToSerWithLove/pseuds/ToSerWithLove
Summary: For Chapter 9: Jaime VThe first early hints of dawn were stealing in the window, painting the pale hair that draped her pillow almost silver and setting her fair skin aglow. If anything, she was less lovely than when he had first watched her rowing down the river and hated her even as he admired her, but now, as he looked at her stripped of her armor and all else, he could not help but want her._______________________________The morning after.





	1. Jaime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tell me,” he said quietly near her ear, “why did those men call you ‘Kingslayer’s Whore’? I would argue that you should be flattered, of course, but I like to think I would remember claiming your maidenhead.”  
> She stiffened beside to him...
> 
> “I dreamed of you,” she said finally.
> 
> _______________________________
> 
> Set in the immediate aftermath of their confrontation with Lady Stoneheart.

Jaime glanced over at the Payne boy who fancied himself Brienne’s squire and Hyle Hunt, who’d attached himself to her for reasons Jaime currently found unclear. They were both already deep asleep on their bedrolls, but the wench was still sitting by the fire with an untouched bowl of broth in her hand. As he recalled, she had never been much for chatter, but she’d scarcely spoken since her sword had cleaved Stoneheart’s head from her body. When they had finally broken for camp after a day of hard riding, she had told them tersely that she would take the first watch: they might well have been the only words she’d said all day. Her gaze had constantly seemed elsewhere, her eyes seeing something other than the road stretched out before them and the trees around them.

 He knelt in front of her and pushed her bowl toward her. “Eat, wench.”

“My name—“ 

“Brienne, I know. As though you’d ever let me forget.” He smirked, aiming to goad her, but she seemed far away.

“I swore an oath to her,” she murmured, looking away from him. “I swore an oath.”

 She blinked, and tears spilt down her cheeks, falling darkly on her bandage as silent sobs shook her broad shoulders. The extra decade that he’d observed etched onto her face when he first saw her riding into his camp fell away, and suddenly she seemed every bit as young as her years. _How old is she anyway? Twenty, perhaps? Yet by her age I’d already killed a king._

He wanted to shake her and curse her for her damned sense of honor, but instead he found himself taking the bowl from her large, trembling hands and setting it aside. He smoothed a matted tangle of thin blonde hair away from her forehead before cradling the back of her neck and pulling her toward him until her head rested on his chest.

She wept against him, but not for long before pulling away and shutting her eyes tightly against her tears. Her pale lashes glowed damply in the moonlight as they fanned across her skin. He wiped at one unmarred freckled cheek then gripped her wide jaw firmly in his rough fingers.

“Now listen to me. _Listen._ ” He did shake her a little then, ignoring the grimace of pain that washed across her face. Her eyes flashed open and met his. “That _thing_ you killed today wasn’t your dear Lady Catelyn. That was … a horror. You did the right thing. The honorable thing. The only thing.”

Her eyes were blue and watery, as beautiful as her descriptions of her Sapphire Isle, and they seemed suddenly, impossibly close. He went on. “Why weep like some foolish maid? Because there are those who still remember Renly and name you Kingslayer? Because you worry that they’ll name you Oathbreaker now as well? Let them. I promise you, there are worse things than such names, and death is one of them. Whatever they say, _you’ll_ know the truth.”

He paused. He knew how unspoken truth hung like armor, protecting you even as it left you bruised and stiff under its weight. “ _I’ll_ know the truth,” he added. _Just as you know mine_. “Let them call you what they will, but live. Live and keep your precious oath and go on looking for the Stark girls, you stupid, stubborn, brave—“ And then his mouth was on hers. 

For a heartbeat she went so still she could have been carved from Tarth’s marble, then she shoved him forcefully off of her. He sprawled on the ground as she stood over him, her great height on full display. Her eyes were steel and fire. _Blue flames_. “Do not mock me, Ser. Do not.” Her sword hand twitched below the splint on her arm.

He laughed as he scrambled to his feet after her. “I’m not mocking you, wench. I’m kissing you. Has no one ever taught you the difference?” _And why am I kissing_ you _anyway, with your ruined face and rough lips and meager teats?_ But he remembered the way the clash of her sword against his had made his blood sing once and the way her bare, wet arms had held him gently when his whole world had been whittled down to his pain and her warmth.

“Come here,” he said softly. He slipped his right arm around her thick, firm waist and slid his hand to her face before claiming her mouth again. She was stiff at first, slowly relaxing into his embrace, hesitantly returning his kiss. When he touched her lips with his tongue, they parted easily even as her breath quickened. He could sense her hands floundering uncertainly in the air for a moment, and then she was clutching the front of his jerkin. He drove her slowly backwards until they collided against the trunk of an oak. She let out a low grunt of pain. _Her ribs_. He eased off her, and she pressed the advantage, leading with a shoulder and rolling them so he was the one with his back against the rough bark. It was his turn to grunt then, although not with pain. Involuntarily, his hips tilted forward, searching out hers.

But she was gone. The night air against him was made suddenly colder in her absence. She stood only a step from him, their heavy breaths mingling between them in a single cloud. He pushed himself off the tree and moved toward her carefully, the way he might have approached a skittish foal. Reaching up, he pulled her head down so that he might kiss her forehead. “Eat, _Brienne_ ,” he whispered against her skin. She let out an unsteady breath that ran like warm fingers all the way down his neck and nodded wordlessly.

The broth was long since cold, and she ate it with a kind of methodical emptiness that reminded him of his own hazy days after she had finally bullied him into living, but she ate. When she was done he took the bowl from her and wiped it clean. “Now sleep,” he told her. “I’ll take the first watch.”

“I already said—“ she began.

“Lie down.” He interrupted, more forcefully this time.

She curled on her bedroll under a fur, and he settled down near her with his long legs stretched out and his back against a rock. She was turned away from him, but from his angle above her he could see her open eyes glittering in the dark. When the fire began to fade, he leaned up to toss another log onto it. It was too cold now to let it die completely. _And it will be colder soon. How long before we can no longer camp along the road without fear of frostbite or worse?_ She stirred at his movement, and he could tell she was still awake.

He shifted over and lay out beside her, propping himself up on his right elbow with his head close to hers. “Tell me,” he said quietly near her ear, “why did those men call you ‘Kingslayer’s Whore’? I would argue that you should be flattered, of course, but I like to think I would remember claiming your maidenhead.”

She stiffened beside to him. _Did she truly think I wouldn’t hear their crude words? Or did she only hope I wouldn’t dare to ask her about them?_ Even in the dim glow of the fire, he could see the blush that descended her face and disappeared down her collar. _And how much further down does it extend, exactly?_ He imagined the tops of her scant breasts flushed pink. 

“I dreamed of you,” she said finally.

For a moment, he thought she might be using his own words to mock him, but her voice was soft and her face serious and drawn. She was being honest, just as he’d been when he’d told her the same. _Although I never told her all of it: not of my terror or Cersei abandoning me to the darkness, not of the subtle curves of her naked body illuminated in the flaming blue light of our swords or the way I trembled at her touch, not of the ghosts that surrounded us or the salvation she alone seemed to offer._ _If I told her I had thought her almost a beauty and almost a knight, even then, would she think I japed?_

“I was fevered,” she explained, her fingers hovering at the bandage on her face. “I dreamed of the sword you gave me … and … of you. I called out for it ... and ... for you.” 

“Do you dream of me often?” he asked. He had meant to tease her, but there was an unexpected hitch somewhere in his chest, and it came out a sincere question. In the firelight he caught her touching a finger tenderly to her mouth as if recalling the recent memory of his lips. 

“Yes,” she whispered, curling up tighter.

_Yes._ The word settled low and hot in his belly and uncoiled there. _Yes. As often as I dream of you, I wonder?_ Waking or sleeping, he found that she was often close in his thoughts. _Closer than Cersei? No. But it wasn’t Cersei I thought of in the tub when Pia’s curves stirred my cock. All my life there's only been Cersei. Why does this absurd, mannish maid vex me now?_ Tyrion’s words came back to him: _Lancel and Kettleblack and Moon Boy, for all he knew._ But it had begun before then, hadn’t it? At least as far back as that cursed bath, where he’d taunted her for thinking he might be interested in her flat chest and bruised thighs even as his own body made a liar of him. _The water running off her thick, pale curls and down the heavy muscles of her legs when she rose with indignation. The gash high on her thigh where I made a red flower blossom._

“You were the last person I fought with my right hand,” he said, realizing even as he spoke that his thoughts had drifted, carrying him into a different conversation. “You were the last person I _touched_ with my right hand.”

She rolled over onto her back then, her broad face inscrutable, a familiar furrow between her brows.

Silently he shoved the edge of her fur back to uncover her legs. She inhaled sharply and tensed but didn’t move. Guessing at where his mark might be hidden beneath the roughspun cloth of her breeches, he reached out and stroked her thigh with a single finger. “Did I leave you a scar for you to remember my hand by?” he asked, a smile playing in one corner of his mouth. 

She frowned a little. Then suddenly bold, she reached up to trace a line across his brow where she’d opened his face with her steel. “Did I give you this one?”

“Aye, it’s yours. Who else could have gotten past my parry?” He let the rest of his hand follow his finger, cupping her warm, strong thigh. She shivered under his touch.

“ _What do you like in a woman?” Hildy asked. “Innocence.”_ He’d meant it derisively, but gods help him, it had been the truth.

“If you call out for me tonight, I’ll be the one to hear you,” he whispered, but his voice had gone rough and even to his ears it sounded like something between a reassurance and a warning. Her eyes went wide then narrowed uncertainly. He carefully withdrew his hand from her leg lest she think him no better than the men she so often guarded herself against with cold armor and a sharp blade even while she slept.

He hauled himself ungracefully up into a seated position and drew her fur back down around her. “Sleep,” he muttered. She closed her eyes obediently, but she shifted slightly, and he felt the press of her leg against his own, strong and solid and decidedly not a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, I haven't tried my hand at fanfic in ages, but this one wouldn't stay out of my head until I got it down. If you read this far, many thanks.


	2. Brienne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She shut her eyes tightly. She had never been lovely, so why should it matter so to her? What difference could it possibly make? But before she had been only ugly, not disfigured. She thought of the look her gaoler had given when she had asked him whether there would be scars, and her stomach lurched. As long as it was covered, she had not had to think on it. She could imagine it was nothing worse than a cut she might have taken from a blade. She flinched when she felt Jaime’s fingers slip under the linen wrapping..."  
> _______________________________
> 
> Brienne faces her wounds.

Brienne shifted to look back at the boy, who was nodding in his saddle. “Wake up, Podrick!” she called. “I don’t want you falling off your horse and knocking your head open.” As she twisted forward a sharp pain flashed across her cracked ribs and caused her to wince. 

“He should sleep in a bed tonight,” she said to Ser Hyle next to her.

“Your tenderness for the boy is to your credit, but you look like you could use a bed more than he does.” _Did he catch me wincing?_ He looked to the splint on her sword arm and then to her bandage. “Or at least someplace where you can wash that filthy rag on your face,” he added.

Her hand went instinctively over her cheek as if shielding it. “We’ll see what we come upon,” she muttered as she nudged her horse on to catch up to Jaime, who rode ahead of them.

She had not dreamed of him these past few nights, perhaps because he was rarely out of her sight in her waking hours. He had not touched her again, not as he had that first night, but when he woke her for her watch he leaned in close to speak her name softly, his breath hot on her skin. It made her shiver, and she thought at least once she caught him grin at her response. _Likely he simply wants to be quiet to avoid waking the others. But then, he doesn’t wake Ser Hyle for his watch that way, I’m certain_. She could feel the flush rise on her neck.

By the time they dismounted at an inn for the evening she ached so badly she took no note of its name and little note of its condition, content to let Hunt negotiate the rooms and board. She stood in the stable beside her horse with her hand still gripping the saddle, trying to breathe through the pain in her ribcage. Jaime eyed her. “Go on to your room,” he said. “I’ll see that your horse is settled.” She found she did not have it in her to argue, so she thanked him.

Inside she striped down to her tunic and breeches and lay down on the bed, grateful for the fire that was already lit in the hearth. The mattress was thin and filled only with straw, but after nights spent on the ground it seemed soft as feathers, and her body eased as she settled onto it. A knock on the door woke her. The room was filled with the last lingering glow of the sunset, and when she pulled herself to her feet she found her movements easier than before. “Come in,” she called as she padded about the room to light a few candles.

Jamie stepped in. “Ser Hyle and the boy are eating,” he said. “Before you go down, let me help you remove that bandage. We’ll wrap it again if needed, but that one is beyond doing you any good.”

She sank down to the edge of the bed and nodded. He sat at her side with one leg bent on the bed to face her. She shut her eyes tightly. She had never been lovely, so why should it matter so to her? What difference could it possibly make? But before she had been only ugly, not disfigured. She thought of the look her gaoler had given when she had asked him whether there would be scars, and her stomach lurched. As long as it was covered, she had not had to think on it: she could imagine it was nothing worse than a cut she might have taken from a blade. She flinched as she felt Jaime’s fingers slip under the linen wrapping.

When it finally fell away she bit her lip then steeled herself. “How bad is it?” she asked. She turned to look him briefly in the eye before turning her ruined cheek back to him. “Tell me true, Ser Jaime.”

When he spoke, it was with care. “If you had ever been a great beauty, it would be a tragedy. They would write a song about you that would make young maids weep. Though in the song they would make your attacker a bear. They wouldn’t want to frighten the maids too terribly with tales of Biter.”

He dropped the bandage beside her on the bed and took hold of her far knee, pulling it to him so that she shifted on the bed to face him. “Tell you true, you say? You were never a beauty, great or otherwise. In that, it seems the gods did you a kindness. You now look somewhat … fearsome.” He paused. “But you _are_ somewhat fearsome, so mayhaps it suits you.” Even as he spoke his hand cupped her uninjured cheek, and he laughed lightly, which turned his words somehow more kind than cruel. “I believe the worst of it will fade with air and sun and time. Best to leave it unbound now.” His eyes as he smiled at her were as green and bright as a summer day and the short waves of his hair were gold and red in the shifting light. She felt her heart clench, though whether it was with relief or something else, she could not tell.

She lifted her fingers to her cheek, both curious and afraid of what she would find. The ragged landscape she felt beneath her fingertips was foreign to her. It seemed impossible that it could be her own familiar face. She drew her hand away. 

“There’s nothing to be done about it,” she said curtly. “Though I dare say now even Ser Hyle would not tell me I’m as beautiful in the dark as any other woman.” 

Jaime’s hand found her knee again, warm through her breeches. “And what does Ser Hyle know of you in the dark?” His tone might have been teasing, but there was something else in it she could not name. 

She thought of Jaime’s gaze in the bath and his skin against hers when she held his weakened body to her. _Far less than you._ “I believe the statement was his attempt at wooing. A poor part of his dismal proposal.”

“Hunt proposed marriage to you?”

“He offered to wed me and bed me and give me a castle full of babes in exchange for Tarth. He even promised to start the bedding and the babes early if I would leave my door unbarred.”

“How generous,” he said, but his tone implied otherwise and his eyes were dark. “What answer did you give him?”

“I warned him he would leave my room a eunuch if he tried.”

He laughed sharply at that, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I believe it. No match was made then?”

“No.” She had smiled at Jaime’s laugh, but her face slowly fell. “Father’s only five-and-forty. He might take another wife and have a son yet, but I don’t know, perhaps I should have considered Hunt’s offer. I’m not like to get a better one now.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s …” Jaime faltered. “He’s a head shorter than you if not more.”

She looked at him carefully. Their eyes were level as he sat before her, and when he had taken her in his arms as they stood, the difference in their heights had not been so great as to make her awkward. _Ser Jaime does not make me bend, at least._

“He’s as bad a match for you as Connington.”

She scowled. “What do you know of Connington?”

“Red Ronnet.” Jaime spat his name like a curse. “I know he was your betrothed. I know he was one of three, though _you_ never mentioned any of them. I know he left his blood and teeth lying in the dirt of the bear pit at Harrenhal, alongside a bit of his pride, I may hope.”

“What happened at Harrenhal?”

“He insulted you, if you must know, and I hit him. This miserable gold hand is good for something besides holding a goblet, it seems.”

“You hit him?"

“Yes.”

“Because he insulted me?”

“Yes.”

She squared her shoulders. “I can defend myself perfectly well, you know. I beat him quite soundly in the melee at Bitterbridge.”

“I fought you myself once, if you recall, and I’ve no doubt you bested him. Pity you weren’t at Harrenhal at the time to defend your own honor, _ser, my lady_.” 

“Don’t mock Podrick. The boy tries.” _And he can’t help being confused, squiring for a maid_. “If you go around hitting every man who insults me, half the men in the Seven Kingdoms will lack teeth.” Her tongue went self-consciously to the gap at the side of her mouth where two of her own had been lost to the Bloody Mummers. “You insult me often enough yourself, for that matter.”

Jaime dismissed her last remark with a wave of his golden hand. “Connington is nothing more than a landed knight. He has no authority, no wealth, and no manners. You’re the Maid of Tarth, the heir of Evenfall. You’re a prize for a man like him, and he should have realized it. More than a prize for a man like Hyle Hunt.”

 _And for a man like you?_ The thought came unbidden and unwelcome to her, and it caught like a lump in her throat. She swallowed it.

“Unbar your door indeed.” Jaime went on. “He shouldn’t speak so to any maid, much less a highborn lady.”

 _No, he should simply have kissed me before a fire and attempted to pin me against an oak. That would have been much more chivalrous and befitting._ The mention of Connington had set her on edge. Had Connington told him of the rose? Of her tongue-tied shame? And yet, she could not deny that the image of Jaime smashing Connington’s face gave her a certain thrill of delight. She snatched up the bandage and stood, crossing the room to toss the rag into the fire.

“Ser Hyle can be pleasant enough when he chooses to be.” She gave a short huff that might have been a laugh if it had more mirth behind it. “He told me I have lips made for kissing.” _Mother Above, why am I still speaking of Hyle? I’d rather knock the man into the dust again than kiss him or consider his proposal._

Jaime followed her to the fireside but did not speak. His silence made the air in the room feel heavy. She knelt to stoke the fire, although it still blazed merrily. “He’s a fool,” she muttered as she rose. “As I told him, all lips are the same.”

His hand caught her face and drew it around to him. “Hardly,” he said quietly. He brushed her lips with his thumb. “Even a fool like Hunt can see what’s plain in front of his eyes.” He stepped closer, and his thumb tugged at the fullness of her bottom lip. Her lips parted as her eyes fluttered closed.

“ _Brienne_.” Her name was barely audible when he said it, yet she felt it in her spine. 

The door swung open, and they sprang apart as quickly as swords sparking off one another. “You didn’t come down to sup, ser, my lady,” Podrick said as he entered. “I brought you something to eat.” 

Jaime’s eyes still held her own. Could he hear her heart hammering from where he stood, or did the sound of it fill only her ears? “Thank you, Pod,” she finally managed. “You’re a good lad.” 

He glanced at Jaime. “Apologies, ser. I sh—should have brought you something to eat as well.” 

Jaime cleared his throat and broke their gaze. “No, no. I’ll go down now, Podrick. Come, let’s leave the lady to her supper and rest.” 

Podrick set a plate and a cup of wine down on the small table and turned to Brienne. “If there’s nothing else you need?” 

“Thank you, but no. Get some rest yourself.” 

Jaime opened his mouth as if he would speak, but either the words did not come to him or he thought better of them, and he gave her a small nod before striding quickly to the doorway. There he paused but did not turn. “Bar your door, wench” he said, and shut it firmly behind him. 

She reached for the cup and noticed her hand trembling. She drank the wine down, pausing only to breathe deeply. The food was satisfying enough, the room was warm, and the mattress was a gift to her battered body. In the morning her hand was steady again, and if dreams troubled her that night, she did not remember them upon waking.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Gentle Reader, you only *thought* I was being a tease in the previous chapter. Haha. Truly though, thank you to everyone who left love and asked for more. This turn-around was fast, but honestly, I'm not sure where it goes after this. (Does GRRM even know where this sprawling plot is headed? I'm not convinced.) But I promise not to leave you as frustrated as Jaime clearly currently is.


	3. Jaime II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can you fight?” she asked. “How are you with your left hand these days?”
> 
> “Judging from the routine bruisings Ilyn Payne gave me, I’m scarcely fit to spar with a squire in a yard. Pod would probably prove a challenge for me if you’ve been training him at all.”
> 
> She was quiet.
> 
> “Can you fight?” he asked. “How is your arm healing?” She had stopped wearing the splint the better part of a week ago.
> 
> “It’s less painful all the time, but I haven’t tested it. Perhaps.” He felt her flex her hand beneath the covers.  
> __________________
> 
> At an inn, Brienne and Jaime learn news from the Vale that will set them on a new course. 

The sound of Hyle Hunt’s voice awakened him. Jaime shut his eyes tighter, as though that would also shut his ears, but it did no good. Despite his efforts to cling to them, the last vestiges of his dreams slipped from his mind as quickly as sand through clenched fingers.

“Oh, I know there’s no truth to it.” Hunt was saying. “The only woman Jamie Lannister has fucked is his own dear sister.”

Jaime’s eyes flew open at that, and he glanced furtively to where Hunt and Brienne stood in the dawn light. Hunt was leaned against a tree with his arms crossed over his chest. Brienne had her back to him and was tying up her bedroll with a ferocity the bedroll itself could not have warranted.

“Not that I entirely blame him, if my own sister were that lovely, perhaps I would have fucked her too.”

Brienne stood abruptly and faced him. “Watch how you speak, ser.”

Hunt laughed. “Watch how I speak to a lady? Or how I speak of your precious Kingslayer? And you wonder why people whisper.”

A pang ran up Jaime’s arm, the ghost of his hand itching to make a fist or find his sword. As if her hand followed his will, Brienne gripped the hilt of Oathkeeper, but she did not draw it. Instead she ran her fingers over the lion on its pommel. He suddenly wished he could see her face better. “I don’t wonder,” she murmured, barely loud enough for Jaime to hear.

“No,” Hunt said. “I suppose you don’t.” He gave her a pitying look as he pushed himself off the tree and stepped toward her. He brushed a thin piece of hair from her face before his hand settled on her shoulder. “You will not reconsider my offer then? I am not as handsome as the men you seem to favor, but you are in little position to make demands of that sort, I’m afraid.  I’m alive and have two good hands, and I am willing and able to give you heirs, all of which is more than I say for Renly Baratheon or Jaime Lannister.”

Jaime could not hear her reply, but he could read her answer in the set of her heavy shoulders.

“Very well.” Hunt said, taking a step back. “But I will take my leave of you here. I would have lived with you, but I will not die for you and your oaths, broken or kept.”

She gave him a slight bow. “Safe travels then, Ser Hyle.”  

He shook his head. “Seven help you, my lady.” He walked off to ready his horse. Brienne turned and caught Jaime’s watching eyes. She flushed then briskly headed to the fire to finish her morning preparations.

They broke fast with salted fish and an onion broth she had filled out with a few root vegetables. “Where is Ser Hyle?” Podrick finally asked.

“Ser Hyle has chosen to part ways with us,” Brienne said.

Podrick nodded solemnly then looked back and forth between her and Jaime. “We got on well enough without him before, ser, my lady. And Ser Jaime is here with us now.”

Brienne’s eyes met Jaime’s over the fire, and it seemed to him there was a quiet question in them. 

“Yes,” he told her. “I’m here with you now.”

All day the cold wind whipped through the trees and cut through their clothes, so it was no surprise to find the common room of the inn where they finally stopped overcrowded. If the weather had not driven all of the travelers along the road in search of a roof and a warm bed, the rumors of wolves would have. The innkeeper who stepped up to greet them was a short woman with a face like a hatchet and a large knife boldly tucked into the waistband of her apron.  _She wants to send a message with it, but I wonder whether she has ever used it. Would she have the mettle? She might, with a face like that, and no doubt she’ll need it before this Winter ends._

“We’re almost full,” she told them. “I’ve only a small room left and the bed in it is narrow, but I could bring up a mat for—” She hesitated for a second, and Jaime noted her eyeing their odd trio carefully: a greying knight, a giant young woman in armor with a terrifying scar and a sword at her waist, and a slight boy of twelve. “For your… son. And there’s soup enough if you’re hungry.”

Brienne opened her mouth as though she would correct the innkeeper’s assumption, but Jaime quickly stepped forward to thank the innkeeper and hand her the coins. “A mat would be most appreciated. As would supper.”

She nodded curtly and slipped the coins into her pocket as she moved into the kitchen.

He put a hand on Podrick’s shoulder. “Come along,  _son_ ,” he said, grinning at Brienne’s disapproving glance. “Let’s find out just how greatly the soup has been watered down.”

The soup the serving girl brought them was thin indeed, and the scraps of meat floating in it were most likely horse; but the bread was soft once it was dipped into the broth, and the ale she served him and Brienne was strong.

“Are you on your way to the tourney then, m’lord?” the girl asked as she cleared their bowls.

 _Seven hells_ , Jaime thought _. Surely Cersei isn’t fool enough to think she can host a tournament now._

“What tourney?” Pod asked. Jaime could hear the boyish thrill in his voice.

“The Lord Protector’s tourney in the Vale.” The girl looked to be about eleven, though she had clearly inherited the innkeeper’s thin, serious face. Pod’s excitement seemed to fuel her own, and her eyes went dreamy as she talked. “The best eight among them will be made Winged Knights. Don’t that sound handsome?  _Winged Knights_. And they say Lord Baelish’s natural daughter is with him now. She’s not much older than me, I hear. I wish some lord would come and claim me as his natural daughter.” The girl shot a disgruntled look at the dirty bowls that filled her arms.

 _Lord Baelish’s natural daughter... Did Littlefinger have a bastard?_  Jaime couldn’t recall such a rumor. He tried to catch Brienne’s eye, but her gaze was studiously fixed on a crack in her cup.

“My mother says I should be happy enough that we’ll get some of the knights through here, but it’s not the same as getting to see them at the tourney, is it?”

 _No,_ Jaime thought bitterly,  _knights along the road and knights in a tourney are rarely the same at all._ He was suddenly glad of her mother’s knife.

As they trundled up the stairs, Brienne offered to take the mat; however, when they saw it, it was at least a foot shorter than her long frame, and Pod was the only one of them it might suitably hold.

“Leave the mat to Podrick. We’ve shared a horse and bath; we can manage a bed, I believe.”

She looked as though she would have liked to protest, but he could tell from the way she carried herself that she was still sore by day’s end.

“You can lay your sword between us if you want to guard your maidenhead, but if I were going to accost you in the night, it would have been much easier on the road than in a cramped room in a crowded inn.” 

She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue.

In bed, she lay with her broad back to him. After some time she spoke quietly, “You knew Lord Baelish at court. Do you believe he has a natural daughter?”

Jaime smiled.  _There’s the clever girl. Gods, she thinks the same way she fights, patiently letting other people wear themselves out while she carefully observes._ “I wouldn’t say I knew him well. I’m not sure anyone would say they knew Littlefinger  _well_. But I will say this, I certainly never heard a rumor of a natural daughter, and it would have been the sort of tale people would have loved to spread, true or no.”

“No daughter of, say, three and ten then,” she said. It was not a question.

“Not that I ever heard gossip of.” The silence built between them again. “No doubt Winter has already come to the Eyrie. They’ll be at the Gates of the Moon in this weather.”

“Can you fight?” she asked. “How are you with your left hand these days?”

“Judging from the routine bruisings Ilyn Payne gave me, I’m scarcely fit to spar with a squire in a yard. Pod would probably prove a challenge for me if you’ve been training him at all.”

She was quiet.

“Can  _you_ fight?” he asked. “How is your arm healing?” She had stopped wearing the splint the better part of a week ago.

“It’s less painful all the time, but I haven’t tested it. Perhaps.” He felt her flex her hand beneath the covers.

“Sansa might be safe, you know. Or at least as safe in the Vale as she would be anywhere else these days. It may be a kindness to leave her.”

“We swore oaths.” Brienne’s voice was soft, tinged with both pain and determination.

Jaime sighed. “You are truly the most pig-headed woman I’ve ever known. All I ask is that you try to hold off on rescuing the child until we are certain she needs rescuing.”  

She made a grunt that might have been either displeasure or grudging agreement.  

Jaime’s mind drifted to his memories of their fight. He was trying to imagine how she would fare in a melee, trying to remember her form, her footwork, her weaknesses.  Pod’s muffled cries pulled him back from the edge of sleep, and he felt Brienne slip from the bed. He propped himself up to watch her. After imagining her in a melee, it was startling now to see her like this: her pale hair tousled with sleep, her long, thick legs sticking out bare beneath her long tunic. She knelt beside Pod’s mat, her voice low and soothing as she shook him awake. “Wake up. Wake up now, Podrick.” The boy gasped. “There now,” she said, her fingers gently pushing the damp hair off his forehead. “It was only a dream.” Then more quietly, she added, “I know. I have them too.” She tugged at the laces of his shirt a little, loosening it from around his neck. “Take a deep breath now.” Podrick obeyed, and she pulled his blanket back over him and smoothed it out tenderly. It wasn’t until his eyes were closed and his breathing even again that she stood to return to bed.  When she saw Jaime watching her, she tugged self-consciously at her hem. Back in bed she pulled the covers over her legs, but she remained sitting up and drew her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them and keeping her gaze on Podrick.

“You know,” he whispered, leaning close enough to her that a dip in the mattress sent his shoulder bumping into hers, “for a maid who acts like a warrior, you look like the Mother herself when you tend to that boy.”

She shook her head sadly. “It’s only that he doesn’t have anyone else. He isn’t even a proper squire, at least not since he squired for your brother, much less anyone’s son.”

 _Podrick Payne, squire for The Imp and Brienne the Beauty._ It would have been easy to find a jape in it, but the thought of Tyrion made his stomach clench these days, and he let it pass.

Her fingers went to the place on her neck where the rope’s marks were still faintly visible if you looked carefully for them. “And I almost got him killed. I couldn’t bear it though. I couldn’t let them kill him. It’s the only reason l…” She trailed off.

“The only reason you didn’t just let them hang you, you mean to say. Stupid girl. I would have been quite angry with you if you’d allowed yourself to be killed after all the work I went to keeping you alive. It isn’t every day I go throwing myself into bear pits to rescue absurd maidens.”

Her mouth twitched into a grin for a moment before resuming its usual serious line. She laid down and shut her eyes tightly. “I wanted to be angry with you for being such a fool,” she said. “But I will never forget the sound of your feet hitting the sand that day.”

He stretched out beside her. “I was angry with you for not arming me to begin with. I told myself that if you had, I’d still have my hand. But I know what you did for me, on the road to Harrenhal. I know how… extensively you cared for me. I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you, and I could hardly repay you by letting you get mauled by a bear. A Lannister always pays his debts, after all. Though now our ledgers are so tangled that for the life of me, I can no longer work out whether I am in your debt or you are in mine.”

She opened her eyes and turned to face him. “I think the debts we owe each other are great enough we might best simply forgive them.” The pale moonlight coming through the window cast her scarred cheek into shadow and shone in her blue eyes.  _I could kiss her again_ , he thought. If she allowed him, it would be as easy as leaning forward and closing the already short distance between them.  _But what then?_  He felt himself stir at the thought, but before he could allow himself to imagine what might follow, she smiled. Her full lips parting over her horsey teeth did nothing to improve her appearance, but her smile softened her eyes and spread a warmth in his chest.

“Spar with me tomorrow?” she asked.

He grinned. “As I said, you are a singularly pig-headed woman.”

“Shall I take that as a yes?”

“Yes. Although if a maid with a broken arm bests me, the tattered remains of my pride may never recover.”

“If ever a man’s pride was resilient, I’m sure it’s yours,” she muttered as she rolled away from him and back onto her side.

He laughed and rolled over as well. In the narrow bed their backs settled against one another, and he fell asleep rocked by the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What started as a flippant little one-off has apparently turned into this multi-chapter thing I was unprepared for, and I fully blame everyone who loved it and asked for more. However, this meant that I had to actually stop and think through at least enough plot to scrape by on. (And ugh, I get it, George. I hate plotting shit out too.) I think the hardest part might be behind me now, so maybe it won’t be almost two months between chapters from here on out.


	4. Brienne II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dead grass flew up around their quick feet as their swords sang. He broke away from her, leaning on his sword for a moment to catch his breath. She waited for him and watched.
> 
> The flicker of a grin in one corner of his mouth was the only warning she needed to meet his blade when he suddenly swung it again.
> 
> “So was Connington the worst of them?” he asked over the clash of their swords. She stepped back a little, letting him come for her. “I know he was only one of three, and yet here you are, the Maid of Tarth still. One cannot help but wonder about the others.“
> 
> _______________________________
> 
> Jaime and Brienne spar, and she tells him a little more about her past.

Brienne had become accustomed to the soft sounds of Jaime’s breathing and the feeling of him shifting beside her. She had even become accustomed to the firmness of his back against hers, the knock of their shoulders together, the brush of his arm. Nary a word had passed between them on the matter, but after having shared a bed once it seemed understood that with the cold nights and crowded inns it would be simpler to continue to do so. Twice the bed had been large enough that they slept with Podrick between them, their eyes meeting over the boy’s disheveled head in the morning in a way that left her with a strange ache in the pit of her stomach. It was not unlike hunger, and she slipped the serving girl a coin in exchange for an extra egg as they broke fast in hopes that might quench it.

It seemed familiar then when he shifted toward her on the mattress, although less familiar when she felt his breath hot against her skin. She began to edge away from him, but his whisper stopped her. He murmured her name against her neck. “ _Brienne_.” She turned toward him, and he pulled back, his eyes dark and glittering as he stared at her.

He touched her face then leaned in to meet her lips.

“Ser Jaime?” she asked as he trailed kisses down her cheek and neck, as though his name were a dozen uncertain, unspoken questions. His fingers found the narrow gap of skin above her breaches where her tunic had ridden up. He pushed it up further, his hand exploring the soft skin of her stomach. “Jaime.” She could hear the quaver in her own voice. She cupped the back of his head and guided his mouth back to hers. Her fingers tangled in his hair. “Jaime,” she said again between kisses, this time steadier. His hand moved over her ribs until his fingertips found the small swell of her breast. “ _Jaime_.” His name was a deep inhale taken after surfacing from a sea wave. It was a fixed point. It was an unyielding rock in the midst of a rushing river.  

“Brienne.” He called out, but his voice seemed far away. “Brienne!”

She woke with a gasp.

He lay to her right, propped up beside her with his left hand angled awkwardly across to shake her shoulder. When he realized she was awake, he reached over to tug at the laces of her tunic. She caught his hand.

“Wh—what are you doing?”

He brushed her hand aside and resumed his work. “This is what you did for the boy, yes? Take a breath, wench. Stoneheart’s noose, was it?” His voice was rough with sleep, and his fingers were cool on her skin as he loosened the cloth. “Gods, your heart is racing.”

She was grateful it was still dark enough to hide the fire she could feel blazing in her cheeks. Even under the cover of night, she found she could not to bear his gaze, and she rolled away from him onto her side, clutching her tunic tightly closed.

“You called out for me,” he said.

“It was only a dream,” she replied. “It’s no matter.”

“You’re trembling. Are you cold? Come here.” He shuffled closer to her until his knees were nestled behind hers and his chest was warm on her back. He laid his arm across her waist. She hesitated a moment then finally let her arm rest tentatively on his. When her hand settled over the end of his stump, he hissed and jerked it away.

“Did I hurt you in some way?” she asked.

“No,” he said softly. She felt his forehead press lightly against the base of her neck. “No.” He slowly adjusted his arm so that it fit back under hers. She let her fingers again lie on the thick scars and the smooth skin of his wrist, and they both exhaled unsteadily. When she woke in the morning she was grateful to find that he had turned away from her as they slept. Like fog burned away by the sun, her dream dissipated with the morning light.

In the clearing where they scuffled at noonday, it was easy to also forget the way that his arm on her waist had been a gentle, reassuring weight in the night. They had sparred several days in a row, but although he was powerful, he had yet to make her yield. His hand was still clumsy sometimes, and when he moved instinctively it was often as though to lead with his right. _And yet, it’s clear I only thought he was strong when we fought alongside the riverbank_. These days he was better-fed and unfettered, and his blows, when they landed correctly, made her grit her teeth.

The dry, dead grass flew up around their quick feet as their swords sang. He broke away from her, leaning on his sword for a moment to catch his breath. She waited for him and watched.

The flicker of a grin in one corner of his mouth was the only warning she needed to meet his blade when he suddenly swung it again.

“So was Connington the worst of them?” he asked over the clash of their swords. She stepped back a little, letting him come for her. “I know he was only one of three, and yet here you are, the Maid of Tarth still. One cannot help but wonder about the others.“

She would not be goaded so easily. _I know this game, ser. You are not the first man to play it with me._

“Shall I tell you of my own betrothal perhaps?” Her parry was a second late, and his blade touched her shoulder. The tourney swords he had found for them days ago were blunted, but the smile he gave her had an edge to it. “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” he said. “It was never quite made official, I suppose, but my father had every intention to marry me off to Lysa Tully once.”

She drove him back a step, then another. “And yet here you are, a knight of the Kingsguard.”

He narrowly sidestepped her thrust. “Only one of the many ways in which I managed to disappoint my father, I assure you.” He landed a strike on her hip, but she landed a stronger one on his shoulder at the same time, and it threw him off balance. As he stumbled, she kicked his sword out of his hand. He caught her leg with his arm, pulling her down on top of him and rolling so that she was pinned underneath him. Their armor scraped together with a noise that set her teeth on edge. With what remained of his right arm he pinned her left, and his hand grasped the wrist of her sword arm. She grunted as he slammed it into the earth until she could no longer keep her grip on the hilt.

“Yield,” he growled. She bucked upward with her hips, attempting to dislodge him, but he ground down against her. His pupils were large and dark in his green eyes as he panted above her. “Seven hells. Yield, wench.”

Unwelcome, her dream came flooding back—the glint of his eyes in the dark, his calloused fingers on her sensitive flesh, the heat of his mouth. She was certain she blushed, but she did not look away. “I… I yield,” she finally choked, the words catching in her dry throat.

He scrambled off her and turned away from her as he stood, running his hand through his golden curls. She heaved herself up out of the dirt and made an attempt to brush the grass from her breeches.

“Shall we break for something to eat?” she asked.

There was a small loaf of bread, some hard cheese, and two only slightly shriveled apples they had bought off the innkeeper that morning, and they divided them up as they sat beneath a large oak.

They shared the meal quietly, listening to the wind whistling through the branches above them and the flutter of birds. He tossed the last bite of cheese into his mouth and turned to her. “You never did answer my question.”

She sighed. “Connington was the worst of them, I suppose,” she muttered. Then, remembering Ser Humfrey’s mottled head and the angry purple shade his aged face had turned, she added, “Well, the cruelest of them, at least.”

“Was he the first?”

“No. The first was Lord Caron’s second son.” She paused. “It’s sad, but I don’t even remember his name now. It began with B, I believe. I was only seven when we were betrothed. Perhaps he would have been kindly enough when the time came, but I only met him once.”

“Why didn’t you wed?”

“He died when I nine.”

“So who was the other one?”

She shook her head. “It’s your turn, ser. Tell me, why didn’t you wed Lysa?”

His face turned abruptly serious, and he narrowed his eyes at her skeptically. “Surely you know enough to guess.”

 _Of course,_ she thought. _Your beautiful sister._ She looked down and tore at the small remaining hunk of bread she held. A group of dark birds had gathered nearby, and she flung them a few pieces as Jaime continued.

“We were fifteen when Cersei convinced me to trade the Rock and my inheritance for her cunt and a white cloak, which was easy enough since I wanted both rather desperately at the time. My oaths put an end to Tywin’s plans with Hoster Tully, even if I couldn’t be bothered to keep them.” He scowled and threw his apple core across the clearing with some force. The birds squawked at him then went over to peck at it too. An uneasy silence settled between them.

She waited a moment, until it was clear he had no more to say on the subject, then she cleared her throat. “I was three and ten when Connington came and left,” she began. “It took another three years for my father to find another prospect: Ser Humfrey Wagstaff.”

“Wagstaff? Of… Grandview, is it? Yellow mascles on a green field?”

She nodded.

“Gods, he must have been, what, sixty already when you were sixteen?”

“Five and sixty.”

Jaime frowned. “A sickly boy, a haughty ass, and an old man. Your prospects make Lysa seem like the queen of love and beauty. And what blessed obstacle impeded that union?”

“A mace.”

He cocked a wry eyebrow at her.

“He told me that when I was his wife, he would expect me to set aside mail and be a proper lady.”

“Obviously he had never seen you in Myrish lace, or he would have been easily dissuaded from such notions.”

She ignored his jape. “He added that if I didn’t obey him, he would chastise me.”

He chuckled. She glanced at him warily. _Does he mock me?_ She found it hard to tell these days whether he laughed at her expense or from some unexpected pleasure he took in her company.

“I told him that he could only chastise me if he could outfight me.”

“I can imagine how poorly that went for him.”

“Yes, well, I broke his collarbone and two of his ribs.”

He leaned toward her and traced the scar her blade had left on his brow. “I must say, you woo roughly, my lady. Perhaps Ser Hyle should be glad of the fact that he survived his courtship unscathed.”

She huffed with exasperation, but his broad smile emboldened her. “Oh, was it wooing you intended when you attacked me with your cousin’s sword? I’ve little experience with the custom myself, but from what I hear, maids are usually enticed with tender words not tempered steel.”  

He laughed outright at that, a clear, sweet sound that echoed in the empty clearing and sent the birds scattering from where they had gathered for her breadcrumbs and the remains of his apple. “You clearly are not most maids,” he said as he rose to his feet. He turned back toward her and extended his hand to her with an exaggerated bow. “Is it tender words you’re after, sweetling? Come then, my lady, grant me one more dance before we meet back up with Podrick.”

She rolled her eyes but gave him her hand, and he pulled her easily to her feet. Soon the clearing once again rang with the music of their steel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear there will be a proper plot of some sort eventually (maybe even in the next chapter!), but I have such a soft spot for Jaime actually getting to know Brienne.


	5. Jaime III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hold still a moment.” She reached down, meeting his fingers before finding the buckle and helping him guide the strap through it. When the greave was tightened into place, he reached for the second one. She switched feet then gripped his shoulder to steady herself as she bent over to help him again. Her hair fell softly against his cheek and brushed his shoulder. He breathed her in.
> 
> _______________________
> 
> In the shadow of the Mountains of the Moon, Brienne readies for the melee.

Jaime walked through the crowd unnoticed, a new helm tucked under his left arm and his stump hidden in the folds of his cloak. The air was crisp and cold, but the sun was bright. _It will be perfect weather for fighting_ , he thought, and for a moment he was jealous of Brienne’s two good hands. He sidestepped a puddle and narrowly avoided colliding with a knight in shining new armor who glared at him as though he were a green squire who had forgotten his place. There was a time Jamie Lannister would have been the one to prowl the grounds, and men like this one would been quick to move out of his way. He had been a golden lion in gleaming armor and a bright white cloak in those days. Now both his thick beard and his curls were streaked with silver, and he was clad in rough, grey wool wrapped over boiled leather. He had been keeping a careful eye out for someone who would recognize him, but no one seemed to give him a second glance.

Within the tent, he found Brienne pacing. “Have you seen Podrick?” she asked as he entered. “He should have been back with the shield by now.”

Jaime shook his head. “No doubt he’s simply been distracted. It’s the boy’s first tournament, I’d wager. He’ll be back in time.” He jostled the helm underneath his arm until he could grip it well enough to hold it out to her. “It’s plain, but that will suit you. See that it fits.”

Brienne shook her pale hair back from her face and shoved the helm down over her head, turning to test the vision and movement it allowed. He walked over to return the extra coins in his pocket to the heavy bag tucked in his bedroll.  

He looked up from the task to see that she had removed the helm and was gazing at him with an expression he now recognized as a thoughtful one. “You knew,” she said carefully.

“What did I know?” He pinned one side of the bag’s laces with his stump and used his hand to tighten the other end.

“You knew I was lying to you when I came into your camp. I told you Sansa was a day’s ride away, but you…” She hesitated and gestured toward the bag. “Did you bring half the Lannister army’s gold with you?”

He paused. “Are you upset that I wasn’t fool enough to blindly follow you without taking some precaution? Or are you upset because I know you well enough to have seen through your pitiful lie? You are a terrible liar, by the way.”  

She bit at her lip but said nothing.

“Yes. I knew you were lying, and I came anyway. I assumed I would have the truth from you one way or another, and indeed I did.” He turned away from her to stuff the bag back into his bedroll. “When you came riding into my camp with your pathetic lie and your splint and your bandaged face, all I could think was that—that I had done that to you.”

“You had no part in it, Ser.”

He stood to face her. “I may as well have. I wanted to believe I could send you off into the world with a king’s seal and a bag of coins and a Lannister sword and consider my oath kept.”

“You furnished me more than adequately. If I’ve failed in my quest, the fault is my own.”

“I didn’t send you on a quest. I sent you on a fool’s errand.”

“You didn’t. You couldn’t have known—“

“I knew,” he said, cutting her off sharply. How often had his thoughts turned to her over the time they’d been apart? _I knew enough to worry, anyway._ “And still I sent you to keep my oaths for me while I stayed behind with my white cloak and my sweet sister.” He could hear the vitriol in his own voice as he said it, but the pig-headed wench blushed and frowned, determined as ever to misunderstand him.

“Go back then, if you’d like,” she said quietly. “Go back to your other obligations: to your army and your sister and your s—your king.” She looked away from him. “You’ve done more than enough for me. They are my oaths too, and I will fulfill them for the sake of my honor and yours, as I promised you.”

He stepped angrily toward her, but she did not look at him. “Do you _want_ me to leave?”

“No, but I do not understand why you are still here.”

He huffed. “Perhaps I’ve developed a strange new penchant for keeping my oaths. Perhaps I’m here because Cersei, who you would so eagerly send me back to, is fucking gods only know who behind my back.” He saw the ugly maid flinch at that. “I spoke the truth to Catelyn Stark in that cell, you know. I’ve never so much as—“ _I’ve never so much as kissed another woman_ , he was going to say. _But that isn’t true anymore, is it?_ He glanced at Brienne’s full mouth, her bottom lip shining damply where she’d bitten at it. “I was faithful to her, and she—in the end, she was a stranger to me.” _In the end. And it was the end, wasn’t it?_ He would have to go back, one day, but it would be for the boy—his king, his tender son who was more interested in kittens than crowns—not Cersei. _I love you. I love you. I love you._ Her words still echoed in his mind, but they were hollow. Perhaps they had always been hollow. Jaime shook his head as though to clear it. “Or perhaps I’m here because you—you don’t know what you looked like when you found me,” he muttered.

She touched her hand self-consciously to her cheek. “I know what I look like.”

“That’s not—I don’t mean your wounds. That is, I do, but it was more than that. You looked… older. I’d never seen you look so frightened and hopeless. You didn’t look like that before, not even in that damnable bear pit, and I…” He faltered. _And I wanted to do whatever it took to wipe that look from your eyes._ In the moment, following her in a lie had seemed a minor thing compared to what he’d already faced for her.

She met his eyes again, a cautious expression on her face. “And do I look that way still? Is that why you stayed?”

He took another step toward her. “No.”

“But you are still here.”

“Yes.”

A horn sounded, pulling her attention toward the tournament in the distance. She shifted away from him. “I should be getting ready.”

He went over to where her armor hung. “Come here, I’ll help you as best I can until the boy arrives.”

The fact that he had not done this since he had been a squire some twenty years ago would have made him awkward even if being one-handed had not, but Jaime was determined. Brienne propped one foot on a box, and he braced her greave in place with his stump. He fumbled awkwardly with the strap as he reached around her leg and tried to feed it through the buckle.

“Hold still a moment.” She reached down, meeting his fingers before finding the buckle and helping him guide the strap through it. When the greave was tightened into place, he reached for the second one. She switched feet then gripped his shoulder to steady herself as she bent over to help him again. Her hair fell softly against his cheek and brushed his shoulder. He breathed her in. She smelled nothing like Cersei—no sweet perfume, no wine on her breath. Instead she smelled like sweat and camp smoke and faintly of her horse. It wasn’t a fragrant smell, but it was earthy and familiar and not entirely unpleasant. He turned his face toward her hair instinctively and inhaled again as he tighten the strap around her calf. She straightened up, although her hand remained on his shoulder. He reached for a cuisse, and she helped him place it on her leg. His fingers brushed the inside of her thigh where the cloth of her breeches had worn thin with riding, and he swallowed.

The sound of the tent flap made both of them look up. Podrick came in carrying a large bundle wrapped in a cloth. He seemed dismayed when he saw that Jaime had already started on his job. “Ser, my lady! I’m sorry I’m late. I had to wait for the shield and I’m—I’m so sorry.” He sat the shield down and rushed over to them.

Jaime stood. "I’ll leave you to it then.” He wandered over to the shield and lifted the cloth curiously. What he saw made him gape for a moment before laughing loudly. “Wench, I thought you might at least have chosen something subtle.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, as Podrick fastened the second cuisse around her leg.

“What ever gave you this idea?” he asked, motioning to the elm tree and falling star.

She shrugged. _Does she truly not know?_ “It’s nothing. It’s a design from an old, broken shield in my father’s armory.”

He looked at her incredulously. “What is Duncan the Tall’s shield doing in your father’s armory?”

Podrick stilled at her feet. She shook her head. “It’s not—I didn’t—Are you certain?”

“The man has four entire pages in the White Book. Do you know how many times I read them when I was first knighted? I think I know Ser Duncan’s sigil when I see it.”

She looked stunned, and he stepped back, taking her in as though for the first time—her long legs and broad shoulders and her absurd, towering height.

“That’s not possible,” she said, as if reading on his face the direction of his thoughts.

“The honorable Tarths, descended from Ser Duncan’s bastard.” Even as he said it, another laugh bubbled in his throat.

“Ser Jaime!” Her reprimand only made him laugh harder.

“Brienne the Tall.” He made a mock bow. “Finish dressing our lady, Pod. She has her ancestor’s reputation to uphold.” Her face was indignant, but there was something in her eyes he couldn’t quite read, and he would have sworn a smile threatened the stern set of her mouth.

Jaime watched as Podrick efficiently helped her into the rest of her armor. She was right: he had left a trail of abandoned obligations in his wake, but the only way to keep all one’s oaths was never to make any. His obligations could wait. He would see to it that they found the older Stark girl at least. _And then?_ The thought nagged at him.

Slowly Brienne disappeared beneath the layers of mail and plate. She must have been an easy target for jests most of her life, but there was no denying that she was impressive in armor. Perhaps the idea of her as Duncan's descendant wasn't so outrageous. She certainly had the build and the implacable sense of honor. When he glanced at Podrick, he could see the boy’s admiration writ clear on his face.

“You look like a p—proper knight,” Podrick said. He was beaming. Jaime smiled at him and then looked back to Brienne. She was staring at him, and there was a lift at the corners of her impossibly blue eyes that suggested she was pleased.

“You just need a favor,” the boy continued. “Proper knights have favors.”

Jaime laughed again at that, and even Brienne smiled. “I’m no knight,” she said. “I’ll manage.”

“I think we can arrange one.” Jaime went to his bag and rummaged around until he found a rumpled, torn doublet at the bottom of it. “Come here, Pod,” Jaime called. “And bring a knife." The lining was crimson silk with threads of gold woven through it, and they made short work of cutting a strip from the fabric. Jaime draped it over the crook of her left elbow then groped for the other end, realizing as he did so that he should have given it to Podrick to tie. She silently reached over with her right hand and helped him knot the rough-cut ribbon. When it was secured, he covered her hand with his own.

“Well, I’ve given you my favor. Aren’t you going to grant me a kiss?” He meant it as nothing more than a taunt and was taken aback when she inclined her head and touched her dry, chapped lips lightly to his. It might have been called chaste, except that just as she began to pull away, she suddenly closed the distance again with a quick press of her lips. The kiss was over as soon as it had begun, but there was a firm insistence to it that caught him off guard.

She withdrew her hand and glanced at Podrick. Jaime found himself startled to remember the boy was still there. He was blushing and clutching her helm in his hands. “It’s time, Podrick,” she said, taking the helm from him and striding toward the entrance. Podrick scurried to grab the shield and open the tent flap for her.

“Be careful,” Jaime called out to her. “Don’t spoil your squire’s first tournament by dying in a melee like some common idiot.” She turned and nodded seriously. He didn’t want her to be serious. He wanted her to laugh with him or scowl at him, anything that might ease the strange heaviness that seemed to settle between them at times. Before he could say anything else, she pulled on her helm, touched the red and gold cloth at her arm, and turned, leaving him to follow after her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why this chapter gave me such pains. I rewrote it, rearranged it, and revised it so many times that I've lost all sense of whether or not it even works. But I think in the end the moments I really wanted are there, so there's that. Now all there is to do is pour a drink, hope someone besides me finds something to enjoy in it, and move on to the next chapter. But look, I finally outlined how many chapters are left!


	6. Brienne III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her lashes were sticky with blood when she blinked. The Mad Mouse was every bit as battered as she was, if not worse, but his bragging hadn’t been entirely vanity. He was light on his feet and stronger than he looked. She was easily a foot taller though and almost twice as wide. He danced from her mace once, then twice, but not a third time. 
> 
> _______________________________
> 
>    
> At the tourney in the Vale, there are prizes of more than one sort.

Brienne’s head was ringing. Blood ran warm and wet down her face beneath her dented helm, but she was still on her feet. She didn’t need to win. They only needed to be able to make certain that the dark-haired girl on the dais was indeed Sansa Stark. They had discussed it along the road, and she had agreed to yield before she could be further injured. But then the last of her opponents had stepped before her. His helm hid his orange hair and foxlike face, yet she could make out Ser Shadrich’s sigil clearly enough on his cracked shield.

Her lashes were sticky with blood when she blinked. The Mad Mouse was every bit as battered as she was, if not worse, but his bragging hadn’t been entirely vanity. He was light on his feet and stronger than he looked. She was easily a foot taller though and almost twice as wide. He danced from her mace once, then twice, but not a third time.

Shadrich’s shield splintered beneath her blow. He staggered, and she swung again. The mace connected to his sword arm and sent his weapon flying. The still-mending bone in her right arm was afire. She adjusted her grip and swung again, crashing against his breastplate. He stumbled and fell. She was on him. Before she could pin him, he heaved the remains of his shield at her head. She pitched to avoid the blow, and he moved with her, attempting to pin her on her back. She could feel mud squelching up beneath her plate and helm. The fight had her blood up, and she noticed only dimly how cold it was. The Mouse had not managed to immobilize her arm, and she bucked upward as she hammered at him with the mace. He tottered.

She pressed the advantage, rolling so that he was once again beneath her. She bashed his helm again with the mace. “Yield!” she screamed. “Yield!” He struggled beneath her, and she hit him again. “Yield!”

“I yield,” he finally cried angrily.  She lurched to her feet. The strip of world she saw through the slat in her helm swam. Podrick ran toward her across the field. She swayed, and he put a thin arm around her to support her. _If I collapse, I’ll crush the lad_ , she thought, but she rested a hand on his should to steady herself as they walked toward the dais.

The young Lord of the Vale sat in the center seat, his long hair hanging limply around his pale face. His velvet doublet was as blue as the sky, and the golden chain that sparkled with sapphires at his neck seemed to weigh heavily on him. _A weak, sickly boy_ , she thought. _And winter has scarcely begun._ The Lord Protector sat at his right, but it was the tall girl to his left that drew Brienne’s eyes. Her thick, intricately braided hair was dark; however her eyes were blue and her cheekbones fair and high. It was a face Brienne remembered from another melee, a lifetime ago, when she had worn a rainbow cloak around her shoulders. _If that isn’t Catelyn Stark’s daughter, she should be._

The girl’s eyes widened as she saw Podrick, but at that moment the boy next to her grabbed at her, demanding her attention, and he said something Brienne could not hear. The boy was distressed about something, and an argument of some sort broke out amongst them. “But I want to see his face!” the Arryn boy suddenly screamed. Brienne’s breath caught in her throat. Before she would form a plan, the boy seized, convulsing in his chair. People scrambled to lower him safely to the ground, and someone called out for a maester.

Brienne leaned down to Podrick. “Quickly, back to the tent.”

“But your prize—“ he argued.

“I have my prize. Let’s go.”

They walked as quickly as she dared. When they were out of earshot of the crowd, Podrick turned to her. “Ser, my lady, the girl—“

“Not here,” she cut him off quickly. “Wait until we’re well away.” 

Inside the tent she pulled off her gauntlets while he removed her helm, and she felt a fresh trickle of blood run down her brow. “The girl is Sansa Stark,” he said quietly as he worked at the buckle of a pauldron.

She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “You’re certain?”

He nodded seriously. “It’s my lord’s wife. My former lord’s wife, that is.” He paused thoughtfully as he removed one pauldron and went to work on the other. “Is she his former wife as well, do you think? Are they still married?”

“I have no idea, Podrick. If he’s alive, I imagine so.” _It’s her. After all this time._ Podrick lifted the pauldron and moved to the buckles of her breastplate. _After all those miles and all that blood and all that death._ She thought of Dick Crabb, who had deserved more trust than she could give him. She thought of Timeon’s bloody gasping when she’d taken his hand and the sword extending like a red tongue from Biter’s mouth. The last made bile rise in her throat, and she was glad at the sound of Jaime’s voice cutting through her reverie.

“Stupid! Obstinate!”

She wiped the blood from her eye as he appeared in the entrance of the tent. “Did your mother mate with a mule?” he asked. “You have the teeth and the disposition for it.” He crossed over to her and helped Podrick lift her breastplate from her. Then he pulled her head down so he could examine the place where the dented helm had opened her scalp. 

He sighed. “You should have Pod should put a stitch in that. What in all seven hells were you thinking? I told you to yield before you got hurt. You agreed to yield before you got hurt.” 

“It’s nothing, Ser Jaime. A cut.” She couldn’t help the grin that spread on her face. She felt giddy and dizzy. Jaime’s hand was still clasping the back of her head, and he was so close to her. As close as he had been when she kissed him, and that memory made the world tilt again. He braced her with his right forearm.

“Steady, wench.”

“Brienne,” she protested lightly. She could not say whether she leaned forward or he did, but her forehead rested heavily against his. “It’s her, Ser Jaime. It’s Sansa Stark. Podrick is certain. We found her, just as we swore.” 

Jaime nodded against her. “Yes. Now we just have to work out a way to convince her to run off with a giantess she’s never met who carries a Lannister sword, a boy who used to squire for a husband she must have hated, and the Kingslayer himself.” Brienne pulled away from him. Her blood stained his forehead. “Or did you think the difficult part was behind us?” he asked.

“No.” She wiped the blood from his face with her thumb.

“Then at least you aren’t a fool.” He sneered and waved her hand away even as his eyes lingered at her scarred cheek and the blood drying in her hair. “Podrick, finishing helping the lady out of her armor. I’m going to try to find her a tub so she can clean off.”

After Jaime had left and Podrick had dutifully stripped her down to her tunic and breeches, she dug a small packet from her bag with a needle and a spool of thread. She handed them to him. “Can you do this?”

He nodded, and she sat so that he could darn the wound on her scalp. To the boy’s credit, he hesitated only a moment at the task and his work was deft. She was grateful when it only took three quick stiches to close.

Podrick tied the tent flap back and stepped outside to start a proper fire. She closed her eyes for a moment. She was sore and could feel all the places where new bruises would blossom soon. Gingerly, she touched her head. There was a knot, but it was small, and the cut was tightly closed now.

When Jaime returned it was with a bent, older woman who wheeled a small cart containing a large caldron, a tub, and several buckets of water. Podrick helped her set about heating the water. As they waited, she gestured toward the dried blood on Brienne’s forehead. “Has someone stitched that up for you?” Brienne nodded. “Good. I didn’t bring thread. Do you have a cup? I’ll make you something for the pain.”

Brienne fetched her a tin cup, and the woman pulled several packets of herbs from the pocket of her apron. She poured differing amounts from each packet into the mug then ladled some of the water into it when it was near boiling. “Let that steep a minute,” she said as she handed Brienne the steaming cup. Brienne sniffed it hesitantly. “Willow bark and yarrow to ease your head,” the woman said. “Mint to cut the bitterness.”

Brienne sipped at the tea while the woman finished heating the water and Podrick helped her fill the tub. “Have the boy bring the tub back when you’re done,” she told them, and she trundled off with her goods.

Jaime untied the tent flap and grabbed her dented helm, handing it to Pod and pulling a couple of coins from a pocket to hand to him as well. “Take this to the smith and see if he can mend it, then you can wander about, but take care.” When the tent flap fell closed once more he turned to face her. There was a droll smile on his face, and he lazily crossed his arms over his chest. “Your bath water grows cold, my lady.”

Brienne frowned. “You should leave as well, ser.”

He shrugged. “Someone is going to have to help you scrub that mud off your back, and your more recent scars are the only things under your clothes I haven’t seen.”

Her cheeks colored, and she turned from him to peel off her mud-soaked clothes and climb quickly into the tub. She curled around her knees with her back to him.

“Hand me that cup.” She nodded toward the empty cup the woman’s tea had been in. 

He handed it to her, and she tried to take it without exposing any more of her skin. She shifted so that her back was to him once more and poured a cupful of warm water over her head, scrubbing at the dried mud on her neck. 

Jaime snorted. “You’ll never get all that off yourself. Hand me your brush. You pour, I’ll scrub.” 

She wanted to protest, but he was right. _And how many times did I do this and more for him? But that was before_. Before he had rescued her, before he permeated her dreams, before he had kissed her, before she knew how warm it was to lie against him in bed, before she had kissed him. She shifted and attempted to shield herself with her knees and one arm as she grudgingly handed him the brush.

He set it down beside him. “Your hair is full of mud and blood. We’ll wash it first.” He held his hand to her forehead to shield her eyes, and she poured water over her head again. He was gentle as he rubbed the blood from her forehead and temple.

For once in all the time she’d known him, he worked silently, and for once she missed his prattle. It would have distracted her from the feeling of his gaze on the freckled expanse of her shoulders and the pleasant pressure of his fingers and blunt nails on her scalp as he worked his way through the rest of her hair. Had her mother bathed her as a child? She couldn’t remember the touch of anyone other than servants and septas. How strange that it would be Jaime Lannister of all people who bathed her now. Ser Jaime the Golden Lion, the Kingslayer, the Lord Commander. The haughty man who had taunted Catelyn Stark from the floor of a filthy dungeon and who had attacked Brienne when he was still in chains now sloughed mud from her skin.

“Rinse, “ he told her. She poured another cupful of water over herself. It was already cooling. She shivered as he brushed at her back. 

When she had been scrubbed clean, he handed her a towel and moved to fan the fire in the brazier as she dressed. He waited to turn until she had pulled on a tunic and tugged up a clean pair of breaches then looked her over appraisingly. “I would have beaten you.” 

She arched an eyebrow but said nothing. 

“If we had crossed steel when I had my sword hand, I would have beaten you.” She watched his eyes again move over the muscles in her arms and her heavy thighs. “But gods, you would have given me a fight,” he added.

“We did cross steel when you had your sword hand, and I bested you, as I recall.”

“I was wearing chains, and I’d been wasting away in a dungeon. I was hardly in top form”

“I was one oath away from drowning you in the river. Rumors of your arrogance at least were not exaggerations, even if rumors of your skill were.”

He laughed. “You wouldn’t have drowned me. You would have missed my company too much. I do wish we could have sparred in my prime. Truly, Brienne, you are as bold and skilled a fighter as any knight I’ve known. Better than most, particularly the lot of them these days.” 

She was accustomed to his japes but not his flattery, and she turned from him toward where Podrick had hung her armor. The small strip of fabric Jaime had given her lay draped over it. She crossed to it and plucked it up then returned and held it out to him. He rubbed one end of it absently between his fingers then let go of it to catch her wrist instead. His fingers were rough and warm. _Does he feel my pulse quicken beneath them?_ she wondered.

She was keenly aware of the places where her shirt clung to her damp skin and of the way the cool air left her nipples small and hard beneath the linen. She took a step toward the warmth of the brazier, but it was a step toward him too, and as she moved, he pulled her closer still.

There were times in the middle of a fight when she suddenly seemed to see the world clearly, as if she looked at it through a fog the rest of the time. She could watch her opponent and know from the twitch of a muscle or the flicker of his eyes what he was going to do next. She felt that way now, and so she was not surprised when Jaime closed the distance between them. His upturned face was inches from hers as she gazed down at him.

“You gave me a kiss earlier when I lent you this,” he said. His voice was low and quiet. “Shall I return that to you now?”

Her heart was hammering so hard that she felt its beat throb in her newly closed wound, yet her head felt strangely clear.

He leaned closer, teasing. “Yes?” His lips almost brushed hers as he spoke.

“Yes,” she whispered. The word was scarcely out of her mouth before his lips were on hers. He dropped her wrist to wrap both arms around her waist and pull her tight against him. As their bodies met, she made a soft, involuntary noise. The silk fluttered forgotten to the floor as she hesitantly took his face in her broad hands. At the gentle insistence of his tongue, she opened her mouth. His hand slipped under her tunic to press against the skin of her back. Their lips met and parted and met again, lazily. She carded her fingers through his soft curls.

The tent flap rustled, and she broke away from Jaime’s kiss, taking a step away from him as she turned to tell Podrick he could return the woman’s tub. But it was not Podrick who stood framed in the entry.

Lord Petyr Baelish stood there with a coin bag in hand. His eyes had narrowed slightly with surprise when he saw Jaime, but he recovered quickly, and she saw him take in Jaime’s hand, which had mercifully slid from her shirt as she stepped away, but lingered on her waist. He glanced at the tub and at their bedrolls pushed together near the brazier, and she could feel the flush creep across her cheeks as he smiled slowly.

“Lady Brienne, the Maid of Tarth.” He bowed slightly. “You ran off without your prize.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has kept reading this and giving it love even though I'm so slow to publish. If I could quit my job and spend my days lazily writing fanfic, I would, but alas! Your comments give me life though. I never planned to keep going this far, but I've been surprised at how much I continue to enjoy the challenge, and I deeply appreciate your comments and feedback!


	7. Jaime IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I haven’t danced in years,” she said as he turned to face her. “Since Renly came to Evenfall.” She lifted her hand to meet his, warm palm to warm palm. 
> 
> “Do you still moon over Renly Baratheon?” he asked. “You can imagine I’m him then if it would please you.” He said it with a cutting smile, but her mention of Renly irked him.
> 
> “It wouldn’t please me.” She went through the motions of gathering her skirt in her other hand, though it was short enough she had no need to hold it clear of her feet. “That all seems a very long time ago now.”
> 
> _______________________________
> 
> After dining and dancing, Brienne receives distressing news.

Jaime ran his hand over his freshly cleaned doublet, lingering at the place where a woman had patched the missing strip of lining earlier that morning. Petyr Baelish had insisted that he be allowed to provide guest rights to the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and the Evenstar’s heir, providing them rooms in the keep and all but demanding their presence at this dinner. He had been both generous and unrelenting in his hospitality, and Jaime misliked it.

A serving girl came to refill his cup, and he noticed her staring at his golden hand where it rested on the table. She had the decency to blush at least when she met his eyes. Or perhaps she simply blushed at his attention, for the smile she gave him was an inviting one, and she leaned further forward than necessary as she poured, displaying her amble bosom. Behind her, Brienne shifted in her seat at the table across from him, drawing Jaime’s eye.

The gown she had been given strained in the shoulders, but they had found a surcote that managed to fall somewhere close to her ankles, although the hem had clearly been let out entirely in an effort to give her every inch of fabric possible. Someone had plaited her straw-like hair in a way that hid her stitches and almost flattered her, and a hint of blaunchet on her cheek attempted to mask the redness of her scarring. At a distance she might have looked passable as a proper lady had her expression not been one of such misery. Still, the delicate mannerliness with which she ate reminded him that for all her scars and hulking size she was a highborn maid. She glanced furtively at the head table where the dark-haired girl Baelish claimed as his natural daughter was seated. When Jaime followed her gaze, he caught the girl’s eyes.

If her features had not marked her as Catelyn Stark’s daughter, the naked hatred with which she looked at him would have. _I am not my sister, wolf-girl. I had no hand in whatever injustices you feel were visited upon you. Spare me your haughty judgments._ He threw back the remainder of his wine and rose, crossing over to Brienne and extending his hand with a slight bow.

She looked at him suspiciously. “Thank you, ser, but I must graciously decline. I’m afraid I do not dance.” The woman to her left giggled drunkenly, as though the thought of Brienne dancing amused her. “I’m certain any number of other ladies would be happy to partner with you.”

“I’ve seen your footwork. If you can move like that with a sword in your hand, you can dance.” He grabbed her hand from her lap, and he was grateful when she allowed him to pull her to her feet and guide her out onto the floor.

“I haven’t danced in years,” she said as he turned to face her. “Since Renly came to Evenfall.” She lifted her hand to meet his, warm palm to warm palm. 

“Do you still moon over Renly Baratheon?” he asked. “You can imagine I’m him then if it would please you.” He said it with a cutting smile, but her mention of Renly irked him.

“It wouldn’t please me.” She went through the motions of gathering her skirt in her other hand, though it was short enough she had no need to hold it clear of her feet. “That all seems a very long time ago now.”

They stepped toward each other. _Yes, it must seem a lifetime ago that you left your Sapphire Isle to follow that would-be king. How little you would have known of the world then. How much you know of it now._ “Renly was a fool,” he muttered as he took her hand in his to lead her in the turn. The look she gave him was a defensive one. “I didn’t say _you_ were a fool,” he added.

“No, you merely implied that I swore myself to one.”

The steps of the dance forced them back to back for a moment, and when they turned to face one another again, her brow was still furrowed. “Renly was kind to me. Do you imagine many men have been kind to me? They have not. He treated me like a lady, which is more than I can say for the men I was betrothed to. Which is more than I can say for you, ser. And he gave me a place in his guard. He made me feel—”

“Renly cared nothing for you,” he said, interrupting her. He knew it was cruel even as he said it, but he did not care to know how Renly had made her feel. The young knight deserved neither her longing nor her dogged loyalty. “Renly only wanted you near because he knew you would ask nothing of him and gladly die for him.”

Her foot faltered, but she squared her shoulders and found the rhythm of the music again quickly. He stepped closer to her than the dance required. “As I said, he was a fool.”

There was a look in her eyes he could not quite read, but her face softened. They performed the rest of the dance in silence. He hoped the cow who had giggled watched them now, for he was pleased to see he had been right about her: she moved with all the grace of a fighter, surprisingly light on her feet and careful and quick to read his next movement. He could not help guide her in the dance with his golden hand, but she did not need it. The slightest shift in his weight or inclination of his head was enough for her to move in harmony with him.

The song ended, and she gave him an awkward curtsey, as though the moment she was done moving she was once more uncomfortable in her own skin. He took her arm to escort her back to her seat and found Littlefinger talking to the woman beside her.

“Lady Brienne,” Baelish greeted her. “We were so sorry to hear the news from the Narrow Sea. Tell me, have you had any word of your father?” Jaime felt her stiffen at his side, and the reaction did not escape Littlefinger’s notice. “I apologize,” he said. “The rumors have not reached you then?”

She gave a small shake of her head. “I have been on the road. I’ve heard nothing.”

“I see.” He looked fleetingly at Jaime. “Sellswords have landed throughout the Stormlands, my lady. At last word, they’ve taken Griffin’s Roost, Crow’s Nest, Rain House, Greenstone, Mistwood, half the Stepstones, and, I regret to inform you, Tarth. If you would like to send word in hopes of finding out out what has become of Lord Selwyn, we can arrange a raven for you, of course.”

She nodded distractedly and sat down heavily in her chair. The chair to her left was empty, and Jaime took it.

 _Sellswords in the Stormlands_. _But which ones, and who has purchased them?_ _Haystack Hall will prove no deterrent if they’ve taken Storm’s End, but surely they cannot intend to march on King’s Landing. Only the Golden Company would have a chance._ Last he had heard, they had broken their contract with Myr and were headed to Volantis. Even so, he found himself wondering how many men were in King’s Landing and how many could be there in time. He thought of the men he’d left behind at Pennytree.

The thought of Pennytree drew his attention back to Brienne at his side. She had taken a drink of wine, and her cup trembled in her hand as she sat it down.

“Brienne, perhaps your father surrendered. He might live yet.”

She looked at him, her blue eyes wide and watery.

“I believe I’ll retire,” she said, rising. He started to stand, but she stilled him with a hand on his shoulder and shook her head. “I can find my own way.”

He glanced at Littlefinger, whose expression was inscrutable. _Tyrion would have understood this game at play, whatever it is. And seen moves I cannot._ Jaime watched her go, her skirts swishing ridiculously around her ankles but her head held high, and found himself missing his brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to take a break for some life stuff, but, uh, I'm back? (And hoping someone is still interested in this.)


	8. Brienne IV

 

Brienne lay stretched atop the furs on her bed, her eyes trained at the dark ceiling above her. She had cast off the gown as quickly as she could and tugged on her own well-worn clothes, clean and mended now. It was a relief to be in them and out of the dress that had only served to remind her of everything she was not. She did not know how long she’d lain there, but the hot tears she had shed for Tarth and her father had dried on her cheeks.

Her mind turned back to the dinner. Ser Shadrich had been there, seated with several other knights of the Vale. She had met his eyes once, and he had grinned slyly at her. But she had seen the looks he cast toward Alayne Stone. She had no doubt he too had sussed out who she was and already imagined his pockets filled with dragons. She had meant to tell Jaime all of it—her meeting with the Mad Mouse at Duskendale and the purse Varys was offering—but he had flustered her so while they were dancing that she had not managed, and then Lord Baelish’s news had driven all else from her head.

A single pair of footsteps echoed in the hall. She could have sworn they paused outside her door for a moment before continuing on, and a door opened and closed nearby. _Was it Jaim_ e? she wondered. _If he would have knocked…_ There had been a time when she had imagined what it would be like to weep on Jaime’s shoulder, but now she thought about his lips, thin and weather-beaten against hers, and the tone of his voice when he had told her again that Renly was a fool.

The stone floor was cold beneath her bare feet as she swung out of bed, but she was afraid that if she so much as stopped to pull on her boots she would lose her nerve, so she padded quietly into the hall and stood before his door. Her knock was light, as though some part of her hoped he was asleep and would not hear her. But the door opened. She saw surprise flash on his face, and then concern. If he had not been abed already, he had been on his way. He stood in the doorway bare-chested. The marks from the straps of his hand visible still where he had removed it. Without a word he opened the door to allow her in. She stepped across the threshold and then leaned against the door as she closed it behind her. It was a solid and reassuring support.

“Are you well?” he asked. She nodded. He touched her shoulder. “Brienne, your father…” He trailed off. “We know nothing with certainty yet.“

“I keep thinking that I should have been there. I could have helped him, protected him.”

“Don’t be absurd. You’re one fighter. You may be good, but you are only one. Against an army of sellswords.”

“Is that what you’re telling yourself right now then? That you’re one man? That whatever happens in King’s Landing will happen whether or not you are there? Or are you already planning how to get back?”

He rubbed at his forehead and pushed his hair back from his face. “I don’t know.” He sighed. “ I don’t know.”

“You swore an oath to Lady Catelyn.”

“I’ve sworn other oaths as well. I’ve broken many of those too. Is that why you came here? To make sure I don’t intend to slip away back to King's Landing in the night?”

 _Why_ am _I here?_ “I don’t know. I… I shouldn’t have come.” She turned to go, but he pressed his hand to the door to still it. His breath was warm on her neck.

“Turn around, Brienne. Look at me.”

She turned, still hemmed in by his arm. She would not have called his green eyes kind—they were never that—but there was something not unlike tenderness in them. He took his hand from the door and brushed at a piece of hair that had come loose from its plait before cupping her face and kissing her. It was strange to realize that his lips were familiar now, but she found them no less thrilling for it. She thought of reaching for him, but the moment seemed so fragile, like any misstep might break it, so she pressed her palms to the door behind her instead.

He broke their kiss to trace along her jaw then slowly down her neck. At the laces of her tunic he stopped, taking them between his fingers teasingly. “Or is this why you came here?” he asked as he slowly pulled at one end of a lace, the simple knot sliding loose.  She tried to take a deep breath but could not. Her chest rose and fell quickly beneath his hand. When the ties were loosened he skimmed a finger beneath the fabric.

His lips traveled the path his fingers had made, pressing a trail across her jaw and down her throat, finding her collarbone and then the flesh beneath it. _Kingslayer’s Whore_. She could almost hear the words again as they’d once been spat at her. She thought of all they had shared—meals and baths and beds, oaths and secrets and trust.  Was it truly so different to share their bodies at the end of all that?  

His hand slipped up her shirt to cup her breast. _Kingslayer’s Whore_. And if she were, what did it matter now? She had sworn herself to Renly once, but he was gone. And then to Catelyn Stark, but she was gone too. And now her father followed. She had no family, no title, no allegiance. She had only a young squire, an impossible oath to a dead woman, a priceless sword, and the man before her.  And so she reached out and touched him.

He made a low, encouraging noise, and she wrapped her arms around him, his muscular back warm and wide beneath her hands. _Kingslayer’s Whore._ But he wasn’t the Kingslayer. Not to her. Not anymore. He was Ser Jaime, who had cut her with steel and with words and yet defended her from them both too, and from worse. _Ser Jaime. Jaime_. “Jaime,” she whispered into his hair.

He kissed her hard on the mouth then pulled back a little with a smirk and tugged at the hem of her shirt. “This will go more smoothly with your assistance, sweetling.”

She pulled the tunic over her head, but the cold air on her flesh made her feel suddenly too aware of her body. She held it to her and glanced at the fire burning in the hearth and the candles that flickered brightly at the bedside. With his hand and mouth on her, she had felt desirous, but standing bare before him she remembered herself. “We can snuff the candles at least, if you’d like,” she muttered. He frowned.  “I know what I look like,” she continued, looking down at the heavy claw marks that scarred her arm and her small breasts sheltered by her tunic.

He gripped her chin in his hand, forcing her head up so she would meet his eyes. “Do you mistake me for Hyle Hunt? I have no desire to fuck you in the dark while pretending you are someone else. And if you think I could, you are thicker than you look. I know you far too well for that. Even in the dark, I would know your shape and the way you move. Gods, I would probably recognize the sound of your breathing at this point. There is no night so dark I could not tell you apart from any other woman in Westeros, and gods help me, I want you.”

He let go of her and took a step back. “Brienne, let me see you.” She clinched her eyes shut and let the tunic fall to the floor, forcing her hands to her side. The first brush of his fingers made her shudder. He touched the maze of scars Biter had made on her cheek and the long ones the bear had given her and a dozen smaller ones left by men’s blades. He touched a nipple and the soft underside of her breast and ran his hand down her belly to the waist of her breeches. She opened her eyes when he tugged at those laces too. As he worked them, she touched him—the scar she’d given him on his brow, the pale curls of hair on his chest, the plane of his stomach. Her hands shook as she reached for his laces, but she managed them anyway. When they were both undone, he took her in his arms and kissed her. She threw her arms around his shoulders.

She felt him take a step back, and she followed it as easily as she’d followed in their dance earlier. They broke apart only when they reached the bed to shed their breeches and crawl under the furs. He moved toward her and she lay back. They kissed and touched and shivered together, and his hand drifted ever lower, caressing her hip and the tender inside of her thigh. And then his fingers were between her legs: pressing, exploring, stroking. They were slick and warm on her and in her, and then he found a spot that made her gasp. “Yes,” he breathed. She arched against him. “That’s it,” he whispered. “That’s it.”

She had touched herself before with hesitant curiosity. She had brought herself to the edge of want, but now he dragged her out beyond all charted territory. She was reminded somehow of swimming—her breath coming in gasps as if she were struggling to keep her head above water, the swell of a wave rising not around her but within her. She clutched at his shoulders. She wanted to call his name but couldn’t find her voice.

And then the wave crashed. The world fell away, and for a moment she floated, weightless. He slowed his touches and made them gentle, but did not entirely stop. She drifted on them, carried back to shore, to her body, to the bed. She opened her eyes. He grinned broadly above her.

She leaned up to take his face in her hands and draw his lips back to hers. She could feel his cock stiff and warm between them. With one hand, she reached down to touch it. He inhaled sharply and buried his face in her neck. “Brienne?” He made her name a question murmured against her skin. She nodded. He lifted her knee, drawing it up to his hip so he could settle between her legs.

She had been warned of pain, but she was too familiar with pain to call this that. He stilled when he was fully in her, and she took a breath then tilted her hips encouragingly. It took a moment to find a rhythm together, but only a moment. He watched her until his eyes seemed to close involuntarily. He might have said her name, but it was hard to tell amidst his gasps. When he had spent himself, he collapsed beside her on the bed, his curls damp on his forehead and a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

She thought he might have fallen asleep and was debating slipping from his bed and making her way quietly back to her room when he rolled over to face her. “You can snuff the candles now, if it will please you.” His voice was satisfied and drowsy. She sat up to blow out the candles then laid back down under the warm furs, where he kissed her sleepily on the shoulder and held her firmly against him, anchoring them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I actually wrote two chapters during my hiatus, and although I'd planned to wait to post this one while I worked on the next chapter, I couldn't bear to hold off. (Also, despite the fact that I often seem to wind up doing it, I always feel incredibly self-conscious about writing smut, so I'm just gonna put this out there and stop agonizing over it now.)


	9. Jaime V

The room was filled with smoke and the stench of burned flesh. If he lived to be an old man, he would never forget that smell, and now it filled his nostrils again. A figure as familiar to him as his own moved nearby him in the smoke. _Cersei_. He reached for her and grasped her wrist as she passed. Despite the heat of the room, she was cold beneath his fingers.

“Cersei, what are you doing? Where is the king? Where is Tommen?”

“He’s here,” she said.

He looked around frantically in the haze. “Tommen!” he called, pulling her along behind him in his search. “Tommen!”

He tripped over something soft but unyielding and was forced to lose his grip on her in order to catch himself on the smooth tiles. Something hard clattered and rolled against his feet. He fumbled for it. The golden crown was small in his hands, and half-melted. He knew then, and he willed himself not to reach for the form that had sent him sprawling, but he could not stop himself. He turned the form over. The boy was unrecognizable, a charred husk.

He retched and coughed, staggering to his feet. “Cersei, we must get out of here. Come with me,” he begged. “Come with me.”

Cersei seemed strangely calm. Her face was pale and proud, her eyes as green as wildfire. “You’ve chosen your own path now, dear brother. Don’t pretend you wish me to walk it with you.”

 

He woke. The scent of burned flesh was once again a memory. The only smells in the bedroom were the smoldering logs in the fireplace and a faint whiff of sweat and sex. His sudden awareness of Brienne’s weight in the bed with him sent his heart pounding in his chest. Too many years of secrecy, fucking desperately and parting quickly, had left him with an instinctive urge to flee or hide. He forced himself to roll over instead and face her.

The nightmare had not been real, but the reality before him seemed stranger. A world of fire and death and Cersei’s icy indifference seemed far more believable than the idea that the former Maid of Tarth was asleep and despoiled in his bed. Nevertheless, there she lay. The covers had slipped down to her waist, leaving her bare beside him. The first early hints of dawn were stealing in the window, painting the pale hair that draped her pillow almost silver and setting her fair skin aglow. If anything, she was _less_ lovely than when he had first watched her rowing down the river and hated her even as he admired her, but now, as he looked at her stripped of her armor and all else, he could not help but want her. She was flat-chested to be sure, but there was a sweet, gentle curve from her waist to hip that begged for his touch; and though she was as broad-shouldered as he was, and perhaps taller, she had fit easily in his arms.

He reached out to trace her crooked nose and the dusty trail of freckles that crossed her cheeks to spill down her shoulders and chest. Her eyes fluttered open, and he watched as the bleary confusion in them was replaced by memory. She blushed furiously and reached for the fur at her hip.

“Too late for maidenly blushes, now, sweetling,” he mumbled as he leaned in to kiss her. _Is this what it is to wake next to someone?_ he wondered. How strange to realize he could keep kissing her like this, straightforwardly and unhurriedly, until they drifted back to sleep or roused each other fully. He pulled her toward him. Another flush of color bloomed in her cheeks.

“It’s almost morning, Jaime.”

“What does it matter? Let the sun shine as boldly on us as it likes. I’ve nothing to hide from it.”

She touched his face fondly but stilled him as he leaned in to claim her mouth again. “I told Podrick I would meet him to train first thing, and I should… I should bathe first. He’ll be looking for me.” She kissed him quickly and then was out of bed before he could pin her in place. She flinched at the sight of the small, brown spots of blood that had dried on the sheet beneath her then busied herself with donning her travel-worn clothes as if they were mail. He sighed and hauled himself out of bed to tug his breeches on as well.

She soothed her rumpled tunic nervously and gave him an uncertain nod before turning toward the door. He caught her before she opened it, tugging her around to face him. “Brienne,” he began, and faltered. It had been easy to make light when they lay naked abed together, but holding her by the door in the clothes they had worn the night before, it was clear how the ground had shifted since they’d last stood there. There was something like fear in her eyes, a trepidation that hadn’t been there in the moonlight. He did not know what reassurances men offered in the light of day, but he imagined they were often lies. Instead he kissed her again. He was gentle at first, then he nipped at her lip and pulled back to smirk at her. “Shall I leave my door unbarred for you tonight? Will you pad over in your bare feet again to ravage me?”

She rolled her eyes and pushed him off her, but as she slipped out the door she looked back at him. The last he saw of her was a small, tight smile she could not quite contain.

 

Later in the steam of the bathhouse, his dream nagged at the edges of his thoughts, but he closed his eyes and tried to recall instead the promise of her smile and her face when she had come undone beneath his touches. He had sworn too many oaths to ever hope to keep them all, and now they pulled him in impossible directions. He shook the water from his hair. A good fight would clear his head. He would call a servant to help him into his armor and then see if the wench and boy were still sparring. It would feel good to clash swords with her again. It would put them back on familiar footing. But he remembered her straddling him in the mud when they had fought in truth and bucking beneath him when they had sparred, and his cock began to betray him. He pulled himself from the tub, grateful for the cool air.

 

A serving boy was just fastening the last buckle in place when Podrick suddenly appeared in his doorway. He was breathless, and his face was white. “Ser Jaime, I…” He looked anxiously at the boy helping Jaime. “That is…” He bit his lip.

Jaime waved the boy off of him. “Thank you. That will be all. On your way now.” He all but pushed him out the door and closed it firmly behind him before turning to Podrick. “What’s happened, Pod? Where’s Brienne?”

“We were sp-sparring by the stables, and she saw him—Ser Shadrich—but he had her with him—Lady Sansa, that is. She grabbed her sword and took off for her horse and bid me find you and tell you to follow. Only, I don’t know where they’ve gone, Ser. She ran off so quickly.”

Jaime was grabbing his bag and swordbelt before Podrick was done talking. He gripped the boy’s shoulder. “Calm down, and come with me. Don’t run, or we’ll look suspicious, but hurry. We’ll find them.” _We’ll find them. We’ll find them,_ he repeated to himself.

He was grateful for Pod’s hands as they saddled Honor, but he could not bother with saddling two horses, and simply pulled Pod up behind him on Honor’s back. _South_ , _surely_ , he thought. He spurred Honor into a run, trying to gauge how long it would have taken Podrick to find him, how much time to walk from his room to the stables, how long to fumble with the saddle and bag.

They couldn’t have turned from the main road yet, unless they had diverted from the road altogether, but Shadrich wouldn’t have done that so soon unless Brienne had forced his hand. _Could she have caught up with him so quickly?_ He forced Honor to a trot, straining to hear the slightest sound over the crunching of hooves and his own pulse. Finally he heard something, so faint at first he though he must have imagined it. He brought Honor to a halt and closed his eyes, focusing his hearing. Again it came through the trees, the clang of steel on steel. It drew him like a moth to a flame, until it was loud enough that he knew they had to be nearby. He slipped from Honor’s back. “Stay here, and hold the horse,” he commanded Pod.

He moved as quietly through the woods as he could. The clanging stopped, and for a moment his heart nearly stopped with it, until he heard a voice.

“Come any closer, and I’ll cut her throat.”

“You won’t get your precious gold dragons if you do that,” he heard her say.

He saw them then. Shadrich's sword lay in the grass. Brienne held Oathkeeper at the ready, but the red-headed knight held Sansa to him. His back was to Jaime, and Jaime had no doubt he had a knife at her throat. Brienne’s eyes flickered to him once, but she kept her face carefully neutral. Jaime stooped to pull a dagger from his boot.

“Let her go, Ser Shadrich,” she said. “She’s no good to you dead. You offered to work with me once. I’ll set down my sword now if you’ll set down your knife. We both want the same thing: Sansa Stark out of the Vale.”

Jaime was steps from him now. Brienne bent to lay Oathkeeper in the grass and spread her hands. “Just let her go.”

Shadrich hesitated, and Jaime took his opening, grabbing him with the ruined remains of his right arm and sliding his knife between the man and the girl like a strike of lightning, laying open his throat. Blood spilled down the Stark girl’s back. She stepped quickly away, her eyes wide, but to her credit, she did not scream. She looked at the dead man at her feet, then up to Jaime, and back to Brienne, who already had sword in hand again. Brienne stepped toward her, and knelt.

“Lady Sansa. You don’t know me, but I knew your mother.” Jaime heard the catch in her voice, but she soldiered on. “I swore an oath to her.” She gestured to Jaime. “Ser Jaime and I both swore an oath to her. We swore to find you. And your sister. To take you to her.”

Sansa lifted her chin defiantly. “My mother is dead.”

“Yes,” Brienne said, and Jaime wondered whether Sansa saw the pain that washed over her face. “But we will keep our oaths. We will see you safe again, my lady.”

Sansa looked at the glimmering pommel of Brienne’s sword and at Jaime. Her eyes narrowed. “Safely back in a lion’s den?”

“No. Safely… wherever you wish. I will escort you back to Lord Baelish, should you desire. Or to your uncle in the Riverlands. Or to your bastard brother at the wall.”

Sansa’s distrusting eyes remained on Jaime, and he nodded. “There is no great love between our families, good-sister, but I will hold you to no vows made under duress. Even if I wanted to send you packing back to my brother, your husband, I would not begin to know where to send you. Lady Brienne speaks true: we made oaths to your mother. We can no longer keep them fully, but we will take you nowhere against your will.” He gestured toward the knife that had fallen from Shadrich’s hand. “Take Shadrich’s knife and horse and be on your way if you prefer your chances on your own. Mayhap you’ll last a week without starving or dying or being raped. Otherwise, bring the horse around and come with us.” He turned to walk away. He would not beg a Stark to allow him to help her, especially a child.

“Very well,” she called out. “Take me home.”

“My lady,” Brienne said, “Winterfell is—“

“Take me to whatever family I have left then. To Jon and the Wall if you must. Take me North.”

“North, then,” Brienne said. Behind him, he heard the creak of saddle leather as they mounted.

The Stark girl glared at him as she trotted past him on Shadrich’s horse. Perhaps it was the hate in her eyes or the wet blood that painted the back of her heavy cloak or the knight’s knife that she still held in one hand, but for a moment he wondered whether her odds on her own might have been slightly better than he gave her credit for.

Brienne brought her mare to a halt at his side and blinked as if trying to focus her vision. She held out a gloved hand, and he watched a snowflake land on the dark leather. “Winter is coming,” she said quietly.

He frowned, “And we’re heading North to greet it like fools.” She looked down at him, and extended her hand. Honor waited for him on the road, but he took her hand anyway and swung into the saddle behind her. She did not start or blush when his fingers settled on her warm hip. She only exhaled and touched them with her own so lightly that if he had not seen her move, he might have thought it nothing more than a brush of the snow that now began to fall around them. Then she gripped the reigns once more and led them toward the road.

**Author's Note:**

> (Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken. Unbetaed.)


End file.
